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01:18 AM Thursday, July 17, 2008
Jul
17
Thu
Chinese mythology is replete with deities that ride clouds up into the heavens. Many startups similarly seeking nirvana on the back of cloud infrastructure have found their ascent rudely interrupted . It seems unlikely that any single cloud infrastructure
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02:40 AM Wednesday, July 02, 2008
Jul
02
Wed
Interesting rule of thumb based on military operational research performed by Frederick Lanchester during World War I: If you’re trying to enter an existing market where the dominant player has greater than 40% market share, you will need to spend at
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01:32 AM Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Jun
25
Wed
Along the road from starting a business to (perhaps) getting to the Next Big IPO, one of the more daunting assignments that an entrepreneur will likely face is the process of raising capital. The task can be decomposed into qualitative & quantitative
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06:03 PM Monday, April 21, 2008
Apr
21
Mon
Golf is an activity that requires a tremendous amount of overhead. Aside from actually learning how to swing, aspiring players also have to set aside continuous time blocks of 4 hours, gain membership at a suitable course, acquire an expensive bouquet
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01:37 AM Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Mar
25
Tue
It can be a challenge today to find a large enterprise that’s not tinkering with desktop virtualization in some way, shape or form. Marketers have been capitalizing on the virtualization hype to repackage what’s essentially an old technology as the latest
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01:27 AM Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Mar
18
Tue
One of the attributes that many investors look for in a startup (besides rockstar team, multi-billion dollar market opportunity etc.) is focus. This is understandable, as startups that try to do too many things at once or switch directions too often are
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02:37 AM Tuesday, March 04, 2008
Mar
04
Tue
One of the more intriguing ideas to bubble out of the virtualization ecosystem is VMCasting – the notion of distributing virtual machines via RSS feeds. Coined by Enomaly , an open source consulting firm best known for Xen management tool Enomalism and
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07:27 PM Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Feb
19
Tue
Individuals can be authenticated either with something they know (username/password), something they have (smartcard) or something they are. The last category, better known as biometrics, comes in multiple flavors, which include fingerprints, faces, irises
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10:23 PM Wednesday, February 06, 2008
Feb
06
Wed
Interesting presentation on fundraising by Simon Clark from Fidelity Ventures. Some great nuggets for decoding VC-speak: “we’re researching this space” = we want to invest in your competitor “we would like to review your model” = I don’t understand the
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11:57 PM Monday, January 28, 2008
Jan
28
Mon
Not too long ago, a China-based VC told me that nearly all the startups he was seeing were of the “Copy To Asia” or C2A variety. Each pitch inexorably led to the goal of becoming the “Google of China” or “Facebook of China” or “YouTube of China” etc.
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02:13 AM Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Jan
15
Tue
How do you know if it’s a real human trying to sign up for an account on your website or posting a comment on your blog, or whether it’s simply a software bot leaching your resources? The most common way today is to subject the alleged human to a CAPTCHA
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12:09 AM Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Dec
18
Tue
Many startups today are global in some way - either drawing their employees from around the world, or selling their products across the globe. But how well do they really understand their customers/employees from the East? Here's a quick pictorial guide
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02:27 AM Tuesday, December 04, 2007
Dec
04
Tue
Great advice from Ed Sim on the critical importance of making a positive first impression when your startup is selling into the enterprise.
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01:52 AM Thursday, November 22, 2007
Nov
22
Thu
Much entrepreneurial energy has been expended on trying to make email better. By contrast, there are relatively few startups driving innovation around snail mail. I'll like to shine the spotlight on two such ventures. Earth Class Mail operates a virtual
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02:45 AM Saturday, November 03, 2007
Nov
03
Sat
Caught up with a local entrepreneur at a security conference in Bellevue. Over lunch, he complained incessantly about a certain individual in his firm who was apparently ignoring him at meetings, not responding promptly to his emails, spreading rumors
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